Accounts and pages on social media circulated a video showing a large crowd, with its publishers claiming it documents a demonstration against the Syrian government in the city of Aleppo.
Kashaf’s team traced the circulating video and cross-checked it with field and local media sources in Aleppo governorate, finding that the claim carries inaccurate details. The footage documents a protest organized by owners of primitive oil-refining burners at the Sakhour bridge in the city of Aleppo, held to voice their objection to the Syrian Petroleum Company’s decisions halting the activity of their burners, which had been operating in the Tarhin area in the Aleppo countryside. The protest involved no political slogans and no demonstrations against the Syrian government, contrary to what the accounts promoted.
Why is this claim misleading?
Changed context: A video of a protest with economic and professional demands, specific to burner owners objecting to the petroleum company’s decisions, was exploited and its context entirely distorted to present it as a political demonstration against the Syrian government in Aleppo.
